The invention disclosed herein relates generally to machine reading information from gaming chips, and more particularly to such machine reading during play of casino table games such as blackjack and baccarat. The invention has particular application to machine reading information from gaming chips for the purpose of ascertaining player betting, where the information read from the chips includes at least the denomination of the chips. That application allows a casino to rate players' betting activities in order to identify players that the casino wants to encourage to gamble in the casino, and to provide them with a commensurate level of free services, meals and merchandise such as accommodations, transportation, entertainment, food and beverages, known as “comping”.
Comping is widely used by casinos to attract and hold gamblers. For example, Atlantic City and Nevada casinos comp players in the amount of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. However, even though casinos have attempted to track table player betting accurately, by pit bosses observations, a substantial portion of the comping inevitably goes to undeserving players while some deserving players go uncomped. In many cases today, ascertaining player betting for the purpose of comping is done manually by pit bosses. As described below, there has been movement in recent years towards automating information gathering and processing for the purpose of player comping. However, the prior art systems described below all have serious shortcomings and drawbacks which the invention disclosed herein avoids.
The “PitTrak Player Tracking System” as advertised by PRC Gaming Systems of Chico, Calif., is a player table game tracking system which receives player identification information on magnetic stripe cards read by readers mounted to the table, and betting information is entered by a pit boss using a touch screen mounted to the table.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,936 issued on Dec. 24, 1996 to Mikohn Gaming Corp. of Las Vegas, Nev., and U.S. Pat. No. 5,613,912 issued on Mar. 25, 1997 to Harrah's Club of Reno, Nev. disclose partially automated gaming table tracking systems which include magnetic stripe readers mounted to the table for entering player identification information on magnetic stripe cards. The system disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,936 also includes a printer which prints player tracking cards having spaces for in which betting information can be entered manually by the pit boss, and a reader which reads the filled-in player cards.
Though both the “PitTrak Player Tracking System” and the system described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,586,936 machine read player identification information and facilitate entry of betting information, since they do not machine read information from the gambling chips but instead require a manual data entry step, they do not truly automate data collection for player comping.
International Patent Publication WO 9710577 of GRIPS Electronics GES, MBH dated Mar. 20, 1997 discloses an automated table monitoring system which includes readers mounted to the table for entering player information on cards, and employs sensors to detect chip presence for automated betting information data entry. Chip presence is detected by sensors mounted to the table at player betting locations and in a dealer chip rack, which in one embodiment may have a chip deposit area for each player. For use of the system with card games such as blackjack, a sensor is also provided for monitoring the status of the dealer's cards. By monitoring dealer card status and the flow of chips between the player betting locations and the dealer chip rack, winning and losing bets are automatically determined and entered into the system. However, the embodiment of the system described in this patent publication which does not include a chip deposit area for each player, does not provide for automatic entry of bet values for each bet. Instead, exact bet values are determined in blackjack only when a player busts or goes over, and these values are averaged and used as a basis for the bet value in other hands. In the embodiment which includes a dealer's chip rack with a chip deposit area for each player, exact bet values per player can only be entered if chips lost and won by a player are inserted and removed only from the chip deposit area assigned to that player. Thus, in one embodiment, exact bet information is not provided, and in the other, the dealer must be careful to associate chips won and lost by a player only with the specific deposit area of the chip rack assigned to that player, which precludes the dealer from mixing chips from losing bets to pay winning bets, as is typically done, and therefore substantially slows game play.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,531,187, issued to Joseph C. Uhland on Jul. 23, 1985, discloses a system for monitoring play at gambling tables which, in the case of a blackjack table, optically monitors the cards played and the chips bet. The Uhland patent states that the system is able to monitor plural tables, and that the overall results are sent to a central computing unit which generates reports and statistics of the day's play. As described in the Uhland patent, an ordinary video camera is mounted to the casino ceiling to look directly down upon the playing surface. According to the Uhland patent, the system identifies the chips bet based on color using the video camera, a scanner and certain generally described circuits. However, a system relying on a single ceiling-mounted camera to monitor all chip locations on a table below likely would not be able to determine how many chips (and their denomination) players bet because multiple chip bets are placed in vertical stacks and only the top chip can be seen.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,814,589 of Leonard Storch et al., issued on Mar. 31, 1989 and assigned to Cias Inc., the assignee of this application, discloses machine reading information (e.g., optically) from the periphery of gambling chips for many purposes, including player activity. This patent discloses fundamentals of automatic gaming chip reading and automatic management of many casino functions using machine read information. Additionally, this patent discloses machine reading chips bet by players using individual chip readers.
International Patent Publication WO 9607153 of John W. Strisower dated Mar. 7, 1996 (U.S. Pat. No. 5,809,482), like the Storch et al. patent, discloses readers which optically machine read information on the edges of a respective stack of gambling chips. However, other than a schematic association of the readers with a gaming table in a block diagram, there is no disclosure of what the readers are, or where or how they are mounted.
International Patent Publication No. WO 9713227 of Digital Biometrics, Inc. dated Apr. 10, 1997(U.S. Pat. No. 5,781,647) discloses a gambling chip recognition system which is described as having the ability to capture an image of a stack of gambling chips and automatically process the image to determine the number of chips in the stack and the value of each. As described in this publication, the system includes a conventional video camera for each gambling position on the gambling table. According to an article in Casino World, September, 1996, pages 42-44, a system known as “Trak 21”, which is advertised by Digital Biometrics, Inc. and is believed to be related to the system described in International Publication WO 97/13227, the cameras are “positioned on the side of the dealer”. As a result, the cameras are still located a distance from the chips, and face in the direction of the players.
Mikohn Gaming Corporation of Las Vegas, Nev. offered a system called “SafeJack” for player tracking and comping. According to a Mikohn advertisement, the SafeJack system employs special gaming chips that each carry an embedded computer microchip. According to an advertisement of the gaming chip manufacturer, Bourgogne et Grasset of Beaune, France, the computer microchip is an ASIC integrated circuit linked to a small coil, which receives energy and interrogation signals through electromagnetic waves emitted from an outside reader device and transmits data back to the reading device. The SafeJack system is advertised to read and display all bets and payouts, and to include a light at each player position to indicate a win, push or loss. Because the SafeJack system requires special gaming chips that each include an integrated circuit, and electronics which transmit, receive and process electromagnetic energy, the SafeJack system is relatively complex and its overall cost is high and it involves exposure to rf energy.
Despite the previous disclosures and systems described above, there remains a need for automatically obtaining information from gaming chips during casino-style game play reliably, non-intrusively, and with little or no interference in or slowing of game play, for player comping and for other purposes. There is a concurrent need to provide a system to do so which is simple and inexpensive, and preferably which also enhances play for players. The invention disclosed herein fulfills these needs.